“Exploitation” merely means to use for your benefit. If you are using an animal product, you are exploiting the animal it came from. There is no such thing as using an animal product without exploitation, by definition.

Even when cruelty and violence is not directly involved, because perhaps you simply found some bones or something, it’s still exploitation. There are lots of reasons to avoid exploitation that don’t require direct cruelty or violence, such as avoiding dependence and the biasing psychological effect that getting a benefit from an animal product has on our reasoning abilities as stupid apes.